


Eternal Damnation

by waterlit



Category: Alice in Wonderland (Movies - Burton)
Genre: How Do I Tag, Introspection, Post-Canon, old fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-05
Updated: 2017-03-05
Packaged: 2018-09-28 07:21:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10079273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waterlit/pseuds/waterlit
Summary: When eternity becomes a stifling curse.





	

Her teeth are sharp (they were sharper before), but gnaw as they might, the chains are steely and hold fast against pressure.

The sun has long set and only the dim stars blink sporadically above her uncrowned head. Her stomach growls and growls and she wishes with great desperation (unbefitting a queen!) for a roast or two. But none are to be had, in this land that borders the waste lands.

There was once, perhaps, when a rabbit or two might have grilled a chicken for her at the clap of her hands. But those days are now long over.

She has always been a good queen, though. The coup d'état was entirely unexpected (none of her courtiers had ever so much as mentioned dissent among the people), and anyway, a queen could have her own way since it was her divine right to rule over the inferior peasants of her land.

The Jabberwocky was her undoing, she knows it now. She chose a creature too weak to fight a mere girl, too frail to turn the tide of battle. And now she stands very nearly alone, chained to an unwilling and fully silent knave, chairing the darkness with her gracious presence. And the trees tip their leafy crowns to her majestic presence, when thunder grumbles in the distance and lightning dances across the iron-grey twilight sky.

When she loses her mind at last, she is bitter and alone amidst the craggy terrain. Mud coats the fox-fur cape across her shoulders and her stomach churns and turns on itself, long bereft of a good, warm meal. There is only an endless fog in her mind, all dark, dank mazes and shadows that creep towards her, the moon a dead shape in the sky. 

There is no cheer across the desolate plain. No life. No one wanders here. Ilosovic lies dead as a log at the other end of the waste, tethered to her in death as in life.

And so, skulking over the wasteland, she weeps and tries to slit her own throat.

But she is queen, she is royal, she is gracious, she is majestic, and she can never die even here in the terrible outskirts of Underland where all the strange things walk.

Some days she wakes to feel the wispy sunlight and a light breeze across her face, but most nights, the darkness knots nightmares and regrets into her untidy tangled hair. It is that she that she despises her long life. For she can never again enter Underland till she is dead, but she can never die, and the road to redemption is a long and lonely one.

Such a curse upon a queen! It is only now that she realises how the promise of eternity might be such a stifling curse.

**Author's Note:**

> First posted on FFN in May 2010. Heavily edited, because why not.


End file.
